David Shuster's Whore-i-ble Suspension (updated)

By Clarice Feldman

David Shuster's been suspended from MSNBC from using a vulgar but common street term, "pimping", to describe how Clinton's campaign was using Chelsea to promote her mother. Tom Maguire reminds us that Shuster was caught numerous times -- notably in the Libby case -- simply making up news with no response by MSNBC.

Extreme Mortman reminds us that Shuster's colleague at MSNBC, Keith Olbermann, used the term to describe General Petraeus' supporter, President Bush:

Keith Olbermann, 9/20/07: "And in pimping General David Petraeus and in the violation of everything this country has been assiduously and vigilantly against for 220 years, you have tried to blur the gleaming radioactive demarcation between the military and the political, and to portray your party as the one associated with the military, and your opponents as the ones somehow antithetical to it."[/quote]

The lesson is you can lie all you want at MSNBC. You can call the President a pimp. But you better not use that term in describing the actions of Chelsea Clinton even if it's the truth.

Update -- Jack Kemp (not the politician) writes:

Perhaps the Clintons forgot about the 2004 Democratic fundraiser at Radio City in New York where top politicians of their party (John Kerry and John Edwards included) sat and laughed as Whoopie Goldberg made vulgar remarks about President Bush, playing on his last name. It seems that top Democratic politicians in attendance didn't mind the coarsening the culture when others are involved, but have no concept or belief that crude remarks, when tolerated in public cultural and media circles, blowback on themselves. After all, a reporter living in an environment of rap music, value free education, "deconstructed" history and contempt for holding any institution worthy of respect, will eventually see, in their self-as-godhead ego, even the Clintons' daughter as unworthy of a minimum standard of public respect.

The Clintons' outrage about this coarsening of the culture with Chelsea -- though justified when considered by itself -- is like an drug deealer complaining that Bobby Bonds doesn't deserve his home run title or a wigmaker wanting a refund at a Dolly Parton concert because Dolly's hair presented a false image.